At
the Intersection of Training and Application

Housatonic C.C.'s new head hopes to strengthen ties to area business
community

Business New Haven
10/29/2007
by BNH

On October 12, Anita T. Gliniecki of Monroe was inaugurated as the
fourth president of Bridgeport's Housatonic Community College (HCC).
In addition to new leadership, the school will soon expand into the
new Beacon Hall on the southern perimeter of its downtown campus. Gliniecki
had been with HCC since 2003, first as academic dean, then acting president.
BNH spoke with Gliniecki just four days following her installation.

Where were you before you came to HCC in 2003?

Before coming to Connecticut I was at St. Claire County Community
College in Port Huron, Mich. My last position there was vice president
of academic services.

Are you a Michigan native?

That's correct. I grew up in rural Michigan.

What's your area of scholarship?

When I went off to college I was a classic undecided [student] - I
didn't know what I wanted to do. But I liked science, liked history,
liked reading, liked writing. After my first year of college I had
a job as a nurse's aid, and that's literally where I found my career
- I loved nursing. But I knew that I also want to teach. So after I
finished my baccalaureate degree, I worked in a wide variety of areas
of nursing to garner expertise. I obtained a master's and began teaching
- first at the university level and then at the community-college level.

What attracted you to administration?

I got into it by default. My first teaching position was at Northern
Michigan University, and within a year I was department chair. I went
to Northwestern, and after a year I was director of nursing. After
that I consciously chose administrative positions, and with each promotion
I was given more and more responsibility. I found that I was good at
and enjoyed being an administrator as well as a teacher.

You have made strengthening HCC's partnerships with the business community
the keystone of your administration. Why is that priority No. 1?

A community college is literally of the community. Having your students
return to the community you need to be in very close contact with business
and industry so that which you are teaching your students is meeting
[the business community's] needs.

What are your most popular programs of study now?

Our strongest areas are health-care programs. We have a very strong
business program, preparing students for work in accounting firms to
financial services to business administration. Also, human services
and all of the social services - we have tremendous programs in those
areas, which also includes criminal justice. The other area we're trying
to get stronger in is the manufacturing area. It's a misnomer that
manufacturing is dead in Connecticut. Manufacturing is not dead - it's
changing.

What geographic labor markets are you mainly preparing students for:
Bridgeport, lower Fairfield County, the Valley?

It's all of them. Half of our students come from [the city of] Bridgeport
and then either stay in Bridgeport or one of those commuting towns.
They could be going up to New Haven or down to Stamford, depending
on what their career is. Or they could be going into Shelton because
there's so much new business and industry there. Because we draw from
an 11-town region, the answer is: all of these areas our students could
be returning to.

What's the feedback mechanism for knowing what companies need from
two-year colleges in terms of workforce preparation?

For our programs we have advisory committees that meet at least twice
a year. Their whole focus is to review the [curriculum of each program]
with the faculty. And as we have students in internships that formal
feedback [takes place]: Were they prepared? Were there other things
we need to emphasize within the program? So it's very formal feedback.
But also, wherever I go I'm asking those questions: What sort of skills
do you need? What sort of courses? What sort of programs?

What's the typical profile of the HCC student today?

Fifty percent of our students are brand-new high-school grads. They're
18, 19, at most 20 years old. They are at the beginning of their [adult]
life and at the beginning of their educational career. The remaining
50 percent of our students are [age] 22 through 80-something. In that
group could be a person seeking [his or her] first career, a person
returning to the job market after having been out for a number of years,
a person who may have consciously decided to change their career, or
their job went away and they need new skills. So our profile is that
there is no profile. We have students at every stage in terms of their
chronological age and their educational age.

What's HCC's enrollment this semester?

We have 4,475 students enrolled in for-credit classes.

Next fall your campus will double in size. How will that impact enrollment
capacity?

When we built this [existing] building, the capacity was 2,600, 2,700
students. And we have been over 4,000 for a number of years. We are
so compressed for space; [the new building] will actually give us a
little bit of breathing room. With the new Beacon Hall our capacity
is projected to be 5,500 students - so we'll be adding an additional
1,000.

Where will those new students come from?

From our [existing] service area. The popular times that students
are looking for classes - early morning and late afternoon - we know
that we need to add more classes at those times. But we have been unable
to do so because we literally had no more [class]rooms.

What exactly is your service area, geographically speaking?

We go from Milford [in the east] to Fairfield on the other side [of
Bridgeport]. Then Easton [represents] the northwest corner, and Ansonia
is the furthest reach up the Valley. That's where our service area
abuts [that of] Naugatuck Valley Community College.

Housatonic has a Research Institute. What does it do, and how does
its work fit in with the college's strategic mission?

The Research Institute is working primarily with our small manufacturers.
With the capabilities of a software package called OneSource, it gives
them the research capabilities of a Fortune 500 company. Our companies
use that tool to determine future markets, perhaps future products
that they could [introduce] to increase their business capacity. We
are the only community college licensed to use this product [created
by OneSource, a division of Omaha, Neb.-headquartered infoUSA]. So
we see this as a service to small manufacturers, because economic vitality
in the region helps the college. It's a symbiotic relationship.

Since our readership is business people, what would you like the business
community to know about HCC that it might not know today?

I'm hoping that businesses in the area already know about us. What
they might not know is our absolute commitment and willingness to work
with them to develop credit or non-credit programs that will meet their
needs.

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